The Lilac House: A Novel

by Anita Nair

  Meera’s eyes widen. No small talk. No checking up on qualifications or credentials. Is he always as impetuous as this? Her eyes widen some more when he mentions the terms.

  The wolves will stop baying at her door. For three months at least. That is the trial period he mentions.

  Meera wonders at the state of the car. How can anyone have such a messy car? He drives well and expertly. Giri is a good driver, too, but he prefers to sit in the back and have the driver deal with the traffic, the bad roads, the beggar children and eunuchs at the intersection, while he reads the Economic Times. He doesn’t want to be bothered. Professor Krishnamurthy, it occurs to her, can’t be bothered either. But in a different way. Perhaps I ought to first clean his car for him, she tells herself and then catches the thought in time. What am I thinking? I am his research assistant, not his wife.

  ‘I thought I’d show you where my house is before I drive you home. It’s not too far from yours. Just a couple of streets away,’ he says, turning into Wheeler Road at Thom’s Café junction.

  The breeze blows Meera’s hair into her face. ‘Have you always lived in Bangalore?’ she asks, filling yet another silence between them.

  ‘Grew up in Madras. Then the US. I’ve been in Bangalore for about eight months now. I am still finding my way around.’

  ‘So how come you chose Bangalore? Are you in the IT industry? This is ridiculous, I know Professor, but I haven’t even asked you what I am to help research.’

  He smiles. ‘I know. We both seem to be novices at this. And no, I have nothing to do with the IT world. I am a weather expert; a cyclone specialist, to be specific. I am working on a book on cyclones. There is a lot of data to wade through, a lot of information to source and collate, and I need help. Which is where you come in.

  ‘As for Bangalore, my wife made me buy this house some years ago. And my daughter chose to go to college here. So when I needed to be in India, it seemed perfect!’

  Wife. There is a woman in the house. Meera is nervous. A little. He seems eminently respectable but there is no telling. A wife makes everything so much easier.

  ‘Ex-wife, I should say. We have been divorced for a while now.’

  Meera’s heart sinks. Oh no! What is she getting into?

  ‘But it is a full household! You will see! I have had to carve out a work space for myself…’ His voice trails away and Meera wonders at the composite of bitterness and sorrow that underlines his voice.

  It is a nondescript house on Graham Road. Rectangular and low, it echoes the aspirations of a time when people weary of worrying about rafters and tiles switched to concrete roofs. A flat roof where you could lay things out to dry and even string a clothesline if necessary. There is a circular driveway from the gate and the porch stands at its apex. To the left of the house, away from the building, is the garage, abutting the corner. A late sixties’ style, low bungalow shorn of the steep gables and monkey tops of her own house. Less pretty, but so much easier to keep clean. Meera thinks with a shudder of her monthly foray with a long-handled cobweb duster.

  ‘Nina wanted an old bungalow. One of those real Bangalore houses. But I thought it would be too much trouble. I am glad that we chose this house. It’s not pretty but it’s functional,’ he says, stopping the car in the porch.

  Meera says nothing. Does he read minds? She looks at him sidelong.

  She runs a quick eye over the garden. A giant old avocado tree stands to a side, casting dense green shadow and spangles of light onto the side of the house. Bougainvillea trail over the porch roof, the gnarled old stem climbing the porch pillars. At the farther corner is a patch of wilderness. Heliconia droop flowers amidst a pool of ferns. A stunted frangipani stands in the middle of what was once a lawn. The crazy paving is broken in parts but here and there where the sun thrusts its way in, geraniums flourish. Pink, red and white blossoms standing tall and healthy.

  Someone is making an effort, or wanting to. A row of terracotta pots wait beneath the avocado tree, and a small cluster of plants in plastic bags.

  ‘I hope to do some work on the garden when I can.’ He shrugs.

  Again. He is doing it again, Meera thinks. Is he one of those people with a sixth sense or whatever?

  Meera gathers her sari pallu around her.

  The house is quiet. Meera hesitates at the door. She watches him slide his key in. Didn’t he say there were other people in the house? What is she thinking of? Walking into the house of a strange man.

  He opens the door and steps in. ‘Kala Chithi,’ he calls softly.

  Meera exhales. There are other people here. Why didn’t he ring the bell then?

  An elderly lady in a grey sari emerges from an inner room. Meera tries not to stare at the woman’s head, the grey stubble that is the grey of her sari.

  ‘This is my aunt,’ he says softly. ‘This is Meera,’ he says, turning to the elderly lady. ‘She’s going to work for me.’ He speaks in Tamil.

  The elderly lady folds her hands in a namaste. Meera does the same. Then she says in her best Tamil, ‘I live just two streets away. On Bailey Road, next to D’Costa Square.’

  He raises an eyebrow at her. ‘Tamil, too! So no secrets in this house, I see!’

  Meera smiles. ‘I grew up in Ooty,’ she offers in explanation.

  ‘Sit down, I’ll bring some coffee,’ the elderly lady says.

  ‘Is it just the two of you who live here?’ Meera asks. The room is tidy but spartan, the newspaper neatly arranged on a glass coffee table, cushions stacked on the cane sofas. The TV in its corner. Coasters on side tables.

  He looks away. ‘No, my daughter is here too. That’s why I chose to live in Bangalore. Because of my daughter.’ He pauses and begins again, ‘I met your son. Is he your only child?’

  Meera smiles. ‘No, I have a daughter. Nayantara. She is nineteen and is at IIT Chennai.’

  ‘Must be a brilliant girl! You must be proud of her.’

  Meera feels a queer sadness wash over her. I must be proud of my daughter, you say. I am. Nayantara. The star of my eye.

  But I have also been wounded by her. That is the thing about daughters, you see. Their mothers have to bear the brunt of it all.

  Tell me, how old is your daughter? Like mine, did she choose you rather than her mother when it came to aligning herself? Where is this girl child of yours who has appointed herself your confidante, ally and daddy’s best friend?

  ‘Smriti. She is nineteen, too.’ He rises abruptly. ‘Come, we might as well get this over with,’ he says, breaking into her thoughts.

  And so Meera sees Smriti.

  Meera stands at the door trying to assimilate all that lies before her in the room. From the window, a filtered green light of sun trapped through leaves. In the dark corners, an underwater green cast by the constantly moving image of the sea. On the wall opposite the bed, a projector beams a continuous roll of waves. Speakers echo their rise and flop; the sound of water again and again.

  A few shelves hold books. The rest of the room is crammed with dolls of every material, organic and man-made; precious and ordinary.

  But it is the girl on the bed who causes Meera to grip her bag even more tightly. Her eyes crinkle. Is that a girl? She hasn’t seen anything like this creature. Not even in her disaster documentaries. A wave of revulsion washes over her.

  It lies poleaxed. Legs separate and hands flung wide apart. Swathed in a blouse and pyjamas of fine cotton, its hair razed to a stubble. Thin as paper and almost as pale, the skin stretched across the bones, causing the cheeks to hollow inwards. The eyes wide open, cast of glass. The mouth askew. A face stricken in a permanent leer. Something about the hardness of the stare and the grim mouth gives it an evil cunning.

  I am watching you.

  Meera knows fear. What monstrous creature is this?

  ‘Meera, this is my daughter, Smriti. Nineteen, that’s how old she is. And condemned for life to be this monster who causes you to flinch each time you look at her,’ Jak says.


  Meera is ashamed. She raises her eyes and meets his gaze.

  ‘Nina and I couldn’t at first forget home. We lived in the States. Our bodies did, that is. But our minds sought the India we had left behind. That was what brought us together. Bound us. And so, when she was born, we decided to name her Smriti. What was remembered. Now that is all there is to her.’

  He is slowly unclenching its fists. ‘In a little while, her fingers will curl inwards again. We do this every hour so that she doesn’t lose the mobility of her fingers.’

  One by one he straightens each finger, smoothening the stiffness out, rubbing gently. He squeezes hand lotion from a tube and rubs it in. Meera swallows, the leap of saliva in her throat absurdly loud.

  She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t know how to respond. With comfort or curiosity.

  Meera walks home. ‘It’s just a few minutes away,’ she says, closing the door behind her. As she turns the corner, she can’t stop the question in her head. How does he bear it? How can he see her like this and be sane?

  ‘What happened?’ she had asked. ‘How did she…?’ Her words trailed off.

  He put down the hand lotion and wiped his fingers. ‘I don’t know. There are so many versions. The doctor’s version. The police version. All I know is, she went on a trip with some friends of hers. And there was a freak accident, so they say.’

  Meera let her fingers slide towards the creature’s. As she slowly straightened the curling fingers, it felt strangely as it used to when she slid her fingers into Nayantara’s when she was a baby. They were warm, fragile, and bereft of a will of their own.

  ‘Nayantara,’ Meera says urgently into the phone.

  ‘Hi Mom,’ a tinny voice trills in her ear. ‘How did the interview go?’

  ‘It was fine. I got the job,’ Meera says. ‘His name is Professor Krishnamurthy.’

  Meera rambles. Anything to keep Nayantara on the other end. Anything for a few moments of reprieve. Of knowing that as long as her child is talking to her, she is safe.

  ‘Mom, I have to go,’ Nayantara breaks in.

  ‘Yes, yes. Nayantara, baby, you will be careful, won’t you?’

  ‘Careful of what?’ She laughs.

  ‘Oh, just careful!’ Meera tries to interject a note of lightness into her voice.

  ‘Sure.’

  Meera holds the phone to her mouth and beseeches into its silence: Be careful, my child. Please be careful.

  VII

  Be careful. You need to handle this one differently, Jak tells himself.

  He wishes Meera were here. She would know how to make this seem natural. Careful, he cautions himself as he lets his eyes wander around the room. Be very careful here. This one will not be as forthcoming as Shivu.

  Jak’s eyes linger on the altar on the eastern wall. On the wooden crucifix and the candles. Would he be able to prevail upon the boy’s religion to make him speak the truth? Bile coats his mouth. Who is this creature he is turning into? Is nothing above or below him in this pursuit to recreate Smriti’s last conscious hours?

  Sometimes Jak cannot recognize himself. The lost boy he sees in Kala Chithi’s eyes. The wayward academic reflected in Meera’s puzzled glance. The stillness of the helpless father in Smriti’s pupils. We are what we are seen as. Or, are we?

  When you walked into Koshy’s, you spotted Meera immediately, in a deep cream sari with intricate black designs on it and around her neck a single strand of pearls. An isle of perfect calm in the sea of people and tables. You knew a sense of inevitability. You stood there looking at her. It was a Hopperesque moment she captured. The Chop Suey one. Hopper’s painting of the woman in a restaurant.

  What was she doing here, you asked yourself curiously as you gathered in the mettle of the rest of the world seated there.

  They had barely spoken during that first car ride but you caught yourself thinking of her every now and then that first week. What had happened, you wondered. Had the husband come home? Had they settled their differences? You couldn’t understand it yourself, this preoccupation, except perhaps that you could see in her tightly reined grief and helplessness a reflection of your own anguish. Something about her manner, the intense imploring cast of her features as she sat in your car that first time, resolutely not searching the roads, filled you with admiration. You approved of women who didn’t give way to the weight of their disappointments. Women who held themselves together.

  But in the din of Koshy’s, she seemed lost. You didn’t know why you asked her to help you interview the person you were meeting, except that you wanted to prolong the moment. When she said she was the one, something leapt in you. A blue flame of hope. The husband was still absent, you deduced. Not that husbands were ever a consideration once you set your heart on a woman.

  Later, in your home, you watched her face when you took her to see Smriti. You waited for revulsion and instead saw sadness.

  She had watched you straighten Smriti’s fingers.

  ‘There is a day nurse and a night nurse. And there are standbys if one can’t come in. There is Kala Chithi who talks to her, sings to her, sits with her, and there is me… We do what we can, Meera. We have to. How can I give up on her and let Nina take her and tuck her away in some hospice there? It would be like burying her alive, don’t you see?’ But you didn’t say any of this aloud. You didn’t want to embarrass or frighten her with a flagrant display of emotion.

  Then she took Smriti’s hand in hers. It reassured you. She had a daughter. She would understand how you felt.

  In two weeks’ time Meera became a part of your everyday. Without her to organize your day, you felt rudderless. You had wondered if you should ask her to accompany you to Cochin. But you weren’t sure that she would go with you. Perhaps one day when the two of you knew each other better, when she trusted you…

  A middle-aged man walks into the room. Grey splattered hair and a paunch that causes his T-shirt to stretch. His mundu, crisp and cream, flicks with every step. Jak’s heart sinks. The man must be only as old as I am but his aura of respectability will not allow me to even bring up the subject. He will first be outraged and then deny it flatly. ‘You must be mistaken. My son Mathew! He is a very studious boy. And a member of the church choir. I think you have the wrong boy.’

  Careful, careful, Jak tells himself and prepares to lie.

  Mathew’s father smiles at him. He goes to an ornately carved roll top desk and extricates a box of cards. He offers a card to Jak.

  ‘Joseph John. Pleased to meet you.’

  Jak fumbles in his pocket for his card sleeve. He dredges a card out and proffers it to the man with a terse, ‘I am Professor Krishnamurthy. I am the Head of Department of Biotechnology at the University of Florida.’ Jak lathers his words with his most pronounced American accent, determined to make an impression and buy the man’s complicity. If Mathew were majoring in medicine, Jak tells himself, he would have introduced himself as the Dean of Paediatrics at Florida Med School. It was Mathew who had hoisted the ‘all is fair in love and war’ flag.

  ‘Your son is a bright young boy. I have been corresponding with him on email. As I was here, I decided to surprise him.’

  The man beams. ‘That is wonderful. Mathew has gone to church. He should be back soon. Please do sit down. Would you like coffee or tea?’

  Jak settles into the chair and waits. For a man whose very soul is restlessness, the extent of his newfound patience amazes him. Such vast reserves of calm, where has it lain hidden all this while?

  So with his newfound patience Jak absently thumbs a magazine, drinks a cup of coffee, eats his way through a plate of banana chips and waits.

  Shivu has revealed what he can. It is Mathew’s turn to take the story forward. But will he?

  ‘Has he always been a very religious boy?’ Jak asks.

  Mathew’s father frowns. The famous Joseph John frown that the rest of the family knows so well. Don’t be an ass, it says. ‘We are a very god-fearing family. A Christian family. All of u
s go to church. My uncle is a bishop, in fact!’

  Jak sits squashed and subdued. After a moment, he smiles and wheedles further, ‘I am so pleased to hear Mathew is such a spiritual boy. The new generation could do with boys like him. You are a fortunate man.’

  Joseph John preens. Which father wouldn’t, Jak thinks sadly. We want it all for our children. Health and happiness, the best of grades and the largesse of at least one of the muses. We want our children to be admired even more than loved. We want to see in our children the fulfilment of our dreams, the expansion of our lives.

  VIII

  ‘Our lives are not ours. God decides the dictum of our lives. “Many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.” The Bible says this. For a while, I was deceived. That was the beginning of my sorrows. Because iniquity shall abound. All of this too is in the Bible, Shivu. But I have seen the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, I have heard his angels trumpet.’

  Jak reads once again the letter Mathew had sent Shivu. He folds it and puts it back into his pocket where it lies alongside the printout that he carries with him everywhere. Three boys and a girl. The sides of a square and the trapped past within.

  He looks at Mathew’s face. Brother Benny Hill, you have seen the sign and heard the angels, but will you speak the truth now?

  Mathew starts when he walks into his home and discovers Jak ensconced in an armchair, nibbling on banana chips and discoursing on the merits of the American education system.